Have you ever been in a situation where the customer or client has made your life hell? Where they perhaps sent an e-mail copying the world and accusing you of everything except robbing Fort Knox? I have, and it felt so unjust, unfair and just plain wrong. How do you know when confrontation is inevitable?Copyright: [...]

Is clarity needed about who owns the account? Is it the client or the account manager? That should be obvious shouldn’t it? Well in an ideal world, it should be the person responsible, but unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world and I’ve seen this “ideal” challenged numerous times. Such challenges are detrimental to [...]

Why would you fire or resign an account I hear you say? Don’t we need all the business we can get? Yes we do, but having accounts that are more trouble than they are worth is debilitating, demotivating and just plain bad business.Copyright: pelfophoto / 123RF Stock PhotoLet’s look at why.A bad account can take [...]

I read about and hear a lot of people talking about adding value to their clients or customers. In fact apart from engaging with “social media” and “innovation”, “adding more value” is probably one of the most talked about business initiatives over the last few years.But what does it really mean? How do we REALLY [...]

What I have tried to do each week is write an article to provide useful and practical information that can be used by anyone who has key relationships with their accounts i.e. clients or customers. That spreads the net rather wide doesn’t it? We all have customers whether they are internal or external to our [...]

A bond of mutual interest and respect creates relationships that are meaningful. Anyone can have a relationship. But a meaningful relationship is very different. How is this established? It’s built, of course, on trust. What I mean by trust is confidence in a person: knowing that you can rely on their integrity, that they are good, reliable [...]

Even if you don’t follow tennis that much, the recent Women’s Semi-Final at Wimbledon was not only enthralling but also offered some interesting insights. The semi-finalists were Serena Williams from the USA and Maria Sharapova from Russia, seeded 1 and 2 respectively. They had played each other 20 previous times and Sharapova had won only [...]

There are certain signs that can tell us we need to do something fast to repair our relationship with our customer.Over the years, there have been certain tell tale signs that I have noticed when in meetings with my contacts. They are sometimes quite subtle signs, but when I notice them I realize there has [...]

What do you do when one of your major key accounts decides to talk with your boss because they are not happy?We had agreed before I went to see Brian that we were not going to meet his demands of lowering our price. His demands were unreasonable and we couldn’t afford to drop our price [...]

It’s getting increasingly difficult to find ways to add value for our customers. I don’t mean tickets to the Stanley Cup Final or the Super Bowl; I mean ways that really help their business.The McDonald’s Group, now called “The McDonald’s Division” is responsible for the Coca-Cola business and therefore the relationship with McDonald’s. One of [...]